Iran’s parliamentary speaker has cast the Republicans’ heavy US midterm election losses as a rejection of the war with Iran, pairing his endorsement of voters’ message with a warning to President Donald Trump’s administration.

“Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on X.

His intervention links two sources of discontent: opposition to the conflict itself and frustration over its economic consequences. High energy prices and inflation caused by the US-Israel war with Iran have frequently been cited as major reasons for voters’ dissatisfaction with the Trump administration before Tuesday’s elections. Senior Republicans have also begun blaming their losses on the fallout from the conflict, which began in late February.

That overlap does not establish that voters share Ghalibaf’s broader interpretation. Blaming the war’s economic consequences for an electoral defeat is distinct from treating the result as an explicit mandate to end hostilities.

Trump has said he is in no hurry to end the war unless Iran meets his demands. On Tuesday, he said the US “might have to go after” Pickaxe Mountain, where Israel believes Tehran has stored part of its enriched uranium stockpile and advanced enrichment centrifuges.

Ghalibaf ended his message with a conditional threat: “If the US govt betrays their public will to serve international paymasters and blackmailers, it will learn our NO comes with a Nightmare.”

The electoral losses have brought criticism of the war’s costs from within Trump’s own party. His stated condition for ending it, however, remains Iranian compliance with his demands.